Russia Plans to Start Cosmodrome Work in 2011

The
construction of a new rocket launch site in Russia's Far East will
begin next
year, the country's top space official said in a scientific council
meeting.

Officials
hope the Vostochny Cosmodrome will be ready to assume spaceflight
duties by
2018, giving Russia a domestic spaceport for human space missions to
replace
the Baikonur
Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

Anatoly
Perminov, head of the Russian Federal Space Agency, said all decisions
have
been taken to ensure construction of the cosmodrome starts in 2011.

Perminov
made the comments in a meeting of the Scientific and Technical Council,
according to the space agency's press service.

The
Russian
space agency's plans through 2015 call for development of the Vostochny
Cosmodrome
in the Amur region of southeast Russia. The new launch site will be
near the
Russia-China border.

Russian
Prime Minister Vladimir Putin announced in July an $800 million
spending
package for construction at Vostochny over the next three years, but
that
figure is a fraction of the projected total cost of the facility.

Vostochny,
which means eastern in Russian, would host flights of the planned Rus-M
rocket,
which engineers are designing to launch a proposed next-generation
manned
spacecraft to replace the venerable Soyuz
capsule.

The
preliminary design contract was awarded to TsSKB-Progress, the
state-controlled
production center that also builds Soyuz rockets. TsSKB-Progress
presented the
results of their conceptual design work at the Russian space agency
council
meeting.

Perminov
said the Rus-M rocket will become the "core element of the future
Russian space infrastructure." The new booster would come in
several
versions tailored for different types of missions, but officials say
the Rus-M
will be more capable than the workhorse Soyuz rocket.

If
the new
space center and rocket are built, Russia could move its human space
launches
from Baikonur to Russian territory. Russia has maintained Baikonur in a
sometimes contentious long-term lease with the Kazakh government since
the fall
of the Soviet Union.